Now I appreciate that their business has been severely hit by internet sales – plus they contributed to their own downfall by being late, and stubborn, to embrace online retailing, including digital music sales – but it’s not because some of their sales staff look like fucking freaks … in fact, if it was up to me, I’d encourage hiring even more people like that.

You see while HMV might not be able to compete on price or range, the one thing they can challenge the digital boys on, is service and knowledge.

When I was younger, I used to go to a shop in Nottingham called WayAhead.

While there were a whole host of record shops in the city – from the big boys like HMV, WHSmiths, Woolies, Our Price and the smaller shops like Selectadisc – WayAhead was, for me, literally way ahead.

You see apart from specialising in the sort of music that would make Northern want to kill himself, the shop owners and staff knew their shit.

Buying a record from them wasn’t just a financial transaction, it was a lesson in music appreciation and understanding.

They would given you their view on what you were buying … why it was so good/bad … tracks that were worthy of special notice … the background on the band or its musicians plus a bunch of other artists you should check out, based on what you’ve just purchased.

In essence, it was a music education … something that even Apple’s Genius’ or Amazon’s algorithm couldn’t compete with … and it ensured I went back again and again and again.

I recently told this story to a client of mine who has retail outlet ‘issues’.

I pointed out that one of the things they need to get a grip on, is who they hire.

Rather than base their staffing criteria on ‘who will accept a particular wage’, they should look at who is good to represent the brand and attract the audience.

That doesn’t mean they have to overspend on staff costs, it just means they have to be more discerning on the criteria of employment.

It also means they have to train … train … and train again.

HMV has a special place in my heart. I know that sounds ridiculous, but they do.

My concern is that if the person managing the company thinks that the key to their fortune is ensuring transactional accessibility, then they’re going to end up encouraging what they say they are trying their hardest to avoid.

Music and film are food for our emotions.

They are, for all intents and purposes, what makes us human.

Fuck, they should be on Maslow’s fucking hierarchy of needs.

The last thing HMV needs is neat, tidy and efficient retail staff, they need people who can invigorate and ignite the masses passion and excitement for music, films and gaming on every visit.

In this World of price consciousness, passion – genuine passion, not the poor excuse too many marketers try and pass off as passion – can be a commercially valuable, true competitive advantage.

I hope the powers-that-be at HMV see the light before it’s too late.

____________________________________________________________________

As evidence of what I’m saying – even though it’s from a fictional book/movie – here are two clips from the wonderful movie, ‘High Fidelity’. You’ll note I’ve linked the film to the HMV store, rather than the Amazon one – just to do my bit for their sales. Ahem.

Queen and heavy metal fan aside, this is a great post with a great point.

Whether your suggestion would be enough for HMV to counter the price and choice options available at online stores is debatable, but it would certainly give it more of a fighting chance than the decision that has been made.

What HMV’s management have done gives more insight into their character than their audiences. It also shows they lack the ability to distinguish between observation and insight.

Good point Pete … especially your observation vs. insight comment. It does feel that they’ve approached their business problems in a superficial way or via a methodology that ensured their personal [ego] mistakes are left untouched.

Didn’t Comet get bought by some finance company a while back for 2 quid?

I am guessing that even though Comet are in administration, they’ll be fine and end up walking out with a massive pay off. It used to be called asset stripping [even though I know this isn’t really that], but now it seems it would be more appropriate to call it livelihood stealing.

fuck you dave. i have much more interesting things to do than run to this blog every fucking time campbell posts some of his shit. i have a daughter to fawn over and a world to save. how the fuck do you think obama won!

This is more like it Robert. This is not just a great read with a great, thought provoking point of view, it shows why you’re such a good planner. Understanding retail strategy within the brand and business strategy is something far too few people appreciate, let alone fight for.

saying neat hair and no tattoos will save hmv is like saying mexicos crime rate will fall if they clean the trains every fucking night. oh sorry, crazy hair gladwell believes that fucking shit doesnt he. he probably is the consultant for hmv then. twats.

Interesting. In the early 90’s used to run one of the two main indie record shops in a town of similar size to Nottingham that also included an HMV, Virgin and Our Price, we all competed very well because the big chains knew their role and we knew ours. The HMVs were supermarkets, the indie shops were for the enthusiasts. Everything you mention about WayAhead was exactly our MO.
And the big chains catered for the mainstream who wanted in and out with the top 40 – end of story.
Records that were big for us, on indie labels and on import for example, then went on to be licensed by major labels and then into the chain stores. I would not stock them after that, I’d not be able to sell them once they were in the chains. They got 1:1 deals from distributers because of the volume etc.
Things got messy when the chains wanted a piece of the indie pie.
Perhaps HMV are realising what they are again.
A supermarket.
Incidentally, the last time I was in an HMV it was probably only 25% music, tops. Its a movies and games supermarket.
I might write something a bit longer about this. Ta E

You’re right, HMV is not really a record shop anymore – just like MTV isn’t really a music channel – but I still believe, given the death of so many small, indie shops like Wayahead and Selectadisc – that HMV could, ironically, fill that void even if it means their passion has to extend to movies and games and not just music.

Maybe that wouldn’t work … but they stand a better chance than what they’re doing now – or worse, what they’re planning to do in the very near future.

On a positive note …

When I was in Nottingham earlier this week, I passed a 2nd hand vinyl shop called ‘Rob’s Records’.

It has been located in the same side street for at least 30 years. It still looks an utter shambles but – and here’s the key – because the owner is utterly passionate about music, it still attracts a very loyal following.

Sure, having one little store is very different to having an international organisation, but I’m just trying to highlight how passion can be a competitive advantage when it infects everything you do, not just the words of your ad campaign.

for a horrible moment i thought robs records might be your fucking shop till you said is was an utter shambles and i remembered that youre a fucking obsessively tidy twat. who dresses like a tramp. youre a walking contrafuckingdiction campbell.

HMV is just another shop, which now has even less soul than before. A mix of record shop, movie shop, mobile store and gadget shop.

They are by no means the only one to mistakenly try and remove their best staff by means of character bleaching.

I was genuinely gutted to hear of the closure of Gamestation. A store that built the most amazing customer bond I have ever seen with it’s key audience. Sure it wasn’t always the most ‘professional’ service, but they knew their stuff, and they were happy to talk to customers for as long as they needed to find the right thing – a huge thing when you need to compete with cheap online prices. (So much so we made it their strapline.)

Sadly GAME bought them, didn’t understand it properly, and turned them slowly into GAME with different branding. Instead of taking two stores with different customers and advantages and giving them different goals, they ended up with two near identical stores.

The tattooed, brightly haired and pierced staff who played obscure game music through the store PA were not what you expect in a game store, but they were exactly what the customers needed.

You might say that watching two staff members play Pro Evo might not be productive, but for any gamer who stood their watching them, you knew instantly that these people know their stuff, they love games like you, and how much is that game? It looks amazing…

Mind you, when I went into a Birkenstock store in Melbourne recently, the sales assistant was so utterly new-age freaky, that I realised I’m no where near being a true ambassador of the Birkenstock brand. This is no doubt good news for them and also very good news for me.

As it happens there was a Way Ahead in Leeds, though not a patch on Jumbo. I seem to remember buying limited edition Smiths vinyl in there. So exactly what music would have made me want to kill myself?
Ocean Colour Scene?
Carter USM?
Billy Ocean?
Fat Larry’s Band?
Meatloaf?

On the subject of questionable music, at the age of 14 I was on a training camp in Chicogo and developed a weakness for a couple of Def Lappard tracks – they were on the radio constantly (I played New Order on the Walkman constantly to cleanse myself) – and I now work in a converted school that was briefly a debauched bar owned by said Sheffield poodle rockers. That’s karma for you.
Or not

2. Don’t slag off Billy Ocean, he paid for a couple of my amps and guitars.

3. It’s spelt DEF LEPPARD.

4. I’m guessing you liked Def Leppard around 1987/8 when Hysteria came out … which means the tracks you developed a weakness for were most likely to be ‘Animal’ or ‘Love Bites’ or ‘Pour Some Sugar On Me’. While that is impressive, it also makes me think that the titles influenced your future YouPorn obsession.

Yes, Hysteria unfortunatey.
On the way to the frozen yoghurt stor after morning training Animal, Pour Some Sugar on Me (basically a song about squirting)
On the way to the drive in ditto.
The only respite was being driven by Cindy, who had a weakness for Rick fucking Astley, which was like having a rest from Media Arts by indulging in a Brand Footprint

There is no excuse for Ocean Colour Scene. None.

And I’m not that young, it’s just the hate for Dido and Stereophonics makes me wish I worked in a record shop in the twenties just to sabotage their airplay
It might have been preferable to working on Morrisons come to think of it, but then wouldn’t be where I am now – oh

Particularly poignant as Scottish indie stalwart, Avalanche Records, have just announced that they’re lifting the needle on nearly 30 years of service to music, rather than the music industry. I, personally, would rather be seeing the back of HMV.

I am sorry to hear about Avalanche Records but I disagree with your view on HMV.

While they are obviously more commercially minded than an indie label and – it’s fair to say – have helped fuck music by promoting the sorts of artists that should have been killed at birth, they still have/had people working there that genuinely care about music and could help influence and inform more developed sense of sound.

Sure, it might not be as pure as smaller labels but [1] tech has enabled bands to produce and distribute music in ways [& at prices] that are beyond previous generations wildest dreams and [2] it’s still better than relying on a computer algorithm for your musical education.

So says the man who made a living making music for the sorts of artists who should have been killed at birth as well as owns a recording studio that he has rented out to an international record label that makes and distributes the sort of music by artists who should be killed at birth.

In it’s present state, HMV just teaches homogenisation though: homogenisation within music to a soylent green of unit-shifting mush; homoginisation of music with trashy paperbacks, action figures, computer games and movies, and now their employees’ appearance. Fuck it, may as well stop off at the tesco metro on the way home, or a motorway services, and be educated by their top ten listing.

The falcon cannot hear the falconer and I think it’s been a while since Snowy heard his master’s voice. Maybe it is time to put the old dog down.

Apart from the fact I am trying to work out why you’re up at this time [Isn’t it 5am where you are???] I am also wondering why it has taken someone so to point out those utterly shameful – and unforgivable – facts.

On the bright side:

1. I was/am such a musical kiss-of-death that I probably stopped certain artists from inflicting their terrible music on societies ears far earlier than they otherwise might have done.

2. I made a shitload of cash out of it which let me buy a shitload of gadgets, which keeps me quiet and off the streets … where you might accidentally bump into me.

I agree Lewis … but the point of this post is less about the HMV company and more about the people who work in it.

Sure. many might be the same parity-pop-pushers that the big record companies are, but there’s a shit load of folk who actually care about music – real music – and now HMV’s owners are trying to stifle their personality and expression, I assume they’ll leave and so the last chance a large part of society had to be positively influenced on their music taste could die.

I just don’t think HMV, and others like it, are really aspirational employment opportunities for music lovers these days, in the same way that a guitar shop is for a guitarist or a game shop is for a gamer.

Fair point … but given the lack of pretty much any other option on the high street, I’d probably rather go there and hope my colleagues give a shit about music than work in the CD section of Asda where I know they wouldn’t give a damn. But that’s just me.

By the way, they’re re-arranging agency desks today. It’s chaos.
I’m in charge of the library. They think I’m going to give D&AD and planning books pride of place. Little do they know they’ll be locked away in place of stuff that’s actually useful.
The Howard Gossage biography will be there, so will the books he wrote that Ciaran kindly pointed me to.
And no one drinks tea in there made in a mug.

Is this part of Mrs CEO’s dictator wannabe influence or a genuine desire to keep things fresh?

That said, there is no excuse for not drinking tea in a proper mug. You’ll be happy/proud to know that while we were in England, we bought – and brought back to China – some big boxes of ‘Northern Tea’. I know you’ll probably regard that as the chicken tikka of tea, but for me, that’s a big deal.

[…] the brand’s image. In October, W+K’s Rob Campbell wrote a solid little number called ‘It Seems HMV’s Management Aren’t Listening‘ which, in a nutshell, illustrated that the real value in the record store retail experience […]